2013. Wow when did that happen?! Oh ok 25 days ago but you know what I mean right? Time seems to be flying by and I’m not sure how much progress I am making.

In ways I am making loads of progress but the old issues still haunt me. I’m still fat to put it plainly. Fat and pretty unfit. Fatter than I’ve ever been in fact and while I know I am much more than a number on the scale it still bugs the hell out of me. This need for things to change but an inability or unwillingness to actually do anything about it must be the most infuriating thing ever!!!

Therapy is going well. It has made me realise how crazily hard I am on myself in almost every way. It’s also making me accept that change for me needs to be in very small steps or else I get overwhelmed and give up. I want everything to be fixed/better right now. Yesterday in fact. Instead I need to appreciate the teeny, tiny victories I make every day and I do make them but that negative voice inside says “no, not good enough!” It’s time to turn the volume down on that voice but it won’t happen overnight and that’s ok too.

So maybe I’m back blogging. Maybe I’m not. For once I’m making no promises or commitments. Whatever will be will be.

Taking a little break while out for a walk with our new doggy and I haven’t felt as alive in a long time. I have been feeling much better but right now I get a real sense of the person I used to be when I exercised because it felt great and ate healthily because it tasted good and made me feel good. In this moment I feel incredibly lucky and positive! Long may it last.

Wow….. so it’s been a wee while since I’ve shared. There might not be anyone there to share with but that’s ok. This is for me.

I’ve been on prozac for postnatal depression since January. I started therapy in May I think. It’s going well but it’s not easy. No surprises there. I have a lot of work to do. On me. That’s the only way my food issues and all the rest will be resolved and fingers crossed I will get there someday.

Right now I’m on my holidays and a little tipsy. Whoopsy. Could there be a better time to write a post for all the world to read? I think not.

I think I need this blog to get stuff out of my head and I would love if there was still a couple of people out there who would be willing to listen. Here’s hoping!

A few weeks before Christmas I went to see my doctor and was diagnosed with postnatal depression, post post-partum in the US I think, same thing anyway. After some deliberation I started taking Prozac (well a generic brand of it but again same difference!). I have also requested to be referred for counselling as I don’t want medication to be the only answer. That said 5 or 6 weeks on I think I am beginning to see results from the medication. I’m slowly starting to gain perspective on how I’ve been feeling or sometimes not feeling over the past year. I’m sure the counselling when it eventually happens will help even more. I do still have bad days of course but overall I feel lighter and much more hopeful. I’ve even started exercising! Just a little but for me that’s alot!!!

I’m not quite sure how to describe what postnatal depression did to me. A part of me still isn’t sure that I even have/had it but it seems as my time on the medication continues so does my perspective. Pretty much nothing I did as mother in the past year was good enough. This is by my own insane standards of course. I stopped breastfeeding at nine months and in my part of the world breastfeeding for even 6 months is pretty unusual and often ridiculed (that’s a post for another day!!) But still in my head I was a failure because I didn’t do it for longer. I cook 99% of my daughters food from scratch and yet I still worried that it wasn’t good enough. I now realise more than ever that I could never, ever meet my own expectations. Never. I found it all so overwhelming and so paralysing. I couldn’t seem to keep on top of anything. I would have good days of course but things would slowly slip again and I would sit on the couch frozen by my inability to keep the house clean and get things done and of course the longer I sat the worse it got. The thing is though I still functioned. I did still get things done but of course they were never enough in my book. I always felt like I was one step away from everything falling down around me. To most people I seemed fine. I put on a happy, calm, nothing can bother me face. Many I times I even fooled myself with this persona and it fed into the “but your fine why can’t you just get on top of things!!” mantra.

My husband thankfully felt and saw that something was wrong and urged to me get help. I’m very grateful for that.
I’m working on getting better and making progress I think. Accepting it all has been the hardest part but with every day that passes I do feel I am accepting it a little more.

This is the third post that I’ve written in as many weeks. The first was me quitting blogging. The second was me not quitting blogging and having a major rant about where I am (and where I’m not) right now. Neither got published so if you are actually reading this one then there must be a full moon or something!

See I’ve lost what little fight there was in me. At least I think I have. These days I can’t quite remember even having any but I must have has some right?
I feel like I’m just existing these days and I HATE it. I’m not participating. Even something as small as leaving comments on other blogs. I just can’t seem to make the effort or find the time. I so don’t want to be the moany, whingy (sorta)blogger but I guess that’s what I am right now. I feel such guilt because there are people in the world with real suffering and sadness and yet hear I am with my puny problems whining about poor, poor me. I have so much to be grateful for. A wonderful husband, an amazing daughter, family, friends, a job, a home. My overall health is good even though I’m treating my body like shit. I have nothing to complain about and I don’t even really want to complain. I think I just want to try to make sense of how I feel. I want to understand why I feel like I am barely functioning, just going through the motions.

I want to be interested again. I want to feel energised. I want to feel some sense of control and achievement. I want to find a little bit of fight in me to get me going. I’m very afraid that’s it’s long gone, lost to me forever.

Also all I want to do is eat. Everything. Every bit of junk and non junk in the world.I know it won’t help, I know it but all my body or brain is screaming at me is to EAT, EAT, EAT !!!!!

So to top all this off my husband thinks I’m depressed and wants me to say it to my doctor the next time I go. Which I will, for him. I’m not so sure that I am depressed myself but then I suppose if I am I won’t really have the best perspective will I? I suppose I feel if I was “properly” depressed I wouldn’t be able to function. I feel I should be unable to get out of bed or be any way productive whereas I am getting up and going to work and doing stuff. Not as much as I feel I should be but I’m getting by. My other worry about being diagnosed as depressed is what do I do then? I’m not too keen on going down the meds route. I’m not sure why as I don’t know much about them but I guess I worry about being dependant on them, I worry about side effects and I also worry about how do I know when I don’t need them any more? I would also be embarrassed to admit to people, family and friends, that I was taking them. Silly I know but I’m being honest.

All that being said part of me also wonders what if taking medication made me feel much, much better. What if my “normal” now isn’t really normal at all and I take the pills and suddenly it’s like wow so this is living !!! Of course all this is assuming that my doctor even agrees that I am depressed.

I do know that whatever is going on my hormones play a role as pms time has gone nutty to say the least. I am experiencing anxiety now, crazy tiredness and just as crazy moods. I’ve changed from one brand of mini pill to another to see if that helps and I’m also taking a vitamin b complex tablet, evening primrose oil capsule plus a multivitamin. I only found out last night about this – PMDD. I have to be honest to myself and say that this section really stood out to me and does describe my feelings eerily well:

In both PMDD and PMS, symptoms occur in the last week of the menstrual cycle and usually improve within a few days after menstruation begins. Both PMDD and PMS may also cause bloating, breast tenderness, fatigue, and changes in sleep and eating habits.In PMDD, however, the following emotional and behavioral symptoms stand out:

The cause of PMDD isn’t clear. Underlying depression and anxiety are common in both PMS and PMDD, so it’s possible that the normal physical changes that trigger a menstrual period somehow exacerbate mood disorders.

Anxiety was the big thing for me this month in terms of pms to the point that I wasn’t even breathing properly. So it seems maybe this is something I should look into too. The thing is if my husband is anything to go by I’m not exactly a bundle of fun the rest of the month either. 😐